Crazy Engineering.... a Reusable Booster for Project Orion

[Spacescifi]

I presume the boosters for project orion are considered a loss the moment the nuke lights up.

I am curious and suppose that a reusable booster that could land itself (ala spaceX) AND survive the nuke detonation blast wave is possible.

 

How? Put the Orion on top of another pusher plate which is the top of the booster.

 

Yes the booster would have to be massive, but with a pusher plate of it's own and rocket engines, it could in theory survive and even land.

Probably as the heaviest first stage reusable booster  ever!

 

Not for scifi. Just curious.

[DDE]

Keep in mind that the nukes used in Project Orion were shaped charges and were to be detonated at a fairly high altitude. It would actually be relatively easy to survive blasts from those unless you're in the cone... where Orion would already be.

Anti-nuclear hardening of rockets is a known quantity. Part of specifications for the R-36 was launching through a series of repeated nuclear blasts over their silo farms.

[kerbiloid]

When every flight requires spending a hundred of nukes, there is no problem in spending several steel pipes.

It's much better to make them easily reproducable.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Serious question: why, after scratching the surface of Orion do people retain the fascination with it? 

I looked at this after reading Niven and Pournelle's Footfall - and even in the book it's such a desperation move, and IRL clumsy and inefficient. 

This isn't a dig at @Spacescifi

   

It's that Orion is kind of a trope thing... And I don't understand the continued interest 

Further - it's likely to be part of KSP2... And one might hope that the way they present it is as a very early tech that gets quickly obsolete 

Edited March 26, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Vanamonde]

Could an Orion-style ship land at all? Or would it just keep vaporizing the ground beneath it with braking burns and fall perpetually into the tunnel it's digging?

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Could an Orion-style ship land at all? Or would it just keep vaporizing the ground beneath it with braking burns and fall perpetually into the tunnel it's digging?

The original Orion project included a Martian expedition, too.

One of the Orions was to deorbit and land by chemical boosters onto the pusher plate and stay there forever as a planetary base.

Others were staying in orbit, get onboard the landed personnel returned from Mars in a chemical rocket, and return to the Earth, being fully orbital.

Edited March 26, 2022 by kerbiloid

[KSK]

I think part of the fascination is that it’s one of those ideas that sounds just too crazy to work - but as far as the General Atomics team could figure out - it would work.

Then there’s the part where it scales up really well (because big yield nukes are easier to design than small yield), so you end up with a launch vehicle that can put really crazy amounts of payload into orbit compared to even Nova/Saturn V/Starship sized chemical boosters.

It’s also very old-school ‘Jeb the Thrillseeker’ KSP for anyone who’s been around the forum long enough.

It’s just a really big geeky, space nerd’s dream (raises hand as a paid up member of the geeky space nerds) - it’s just a shame about the practicalities.

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Serious question: why, after scratching the surface of Orion do people retain the fascination with it? 

Why not? 

People are still fascinated by the Saturn V and the possibilities it had in it, despite it obviously being uneconomical. Just because it may end up being a blip in aerospace history doesn't mean it should be forgotten.

[DDE]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It's that Orion is kind of a trope thing... And I don't understand the continued interest 

It's ridiculously over the top. This makes it an effective meme for wowing the outsiders and signalling your belonging to the space/hard SF geek club.

[kerbiloid]

12 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

why, after scratching the surface of Orion do people retain the fascination with it? 

Because it's the only known viable design (preferrably in the Mini-Mag version, but the classic one is what doesn't require hi-tech) of interplanetary and (Mini-Mag) interstellar drive.

And because serious people were doing that.

[Nuke]

i still think this is moonbase stuff. people dont care if you nuke a barren airless wasteland. 

16 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Could an Orion-style ship land at all? Or would it just keep vaporizing the ground beneath it with braking burns and fall perpetually into the tunnel it's digging?

i wonder if a bigger version of the chopstick rocket catcher would work. granted you couldn't do that anywhere with an atmosphere. and you would probibly still need to armor them with consumable ablative blast shields.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Nuke

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Because it's the only known viable design (preferrably in the Mini-Mag version, but the classic one is what doesn't require hi-tech) of interplanetary and (Mini-Mag) interstellar drive.

And because serious people were doing that.

Oh crap! That's the part I keep forgetting.  I've been so focused on the 'getting off the planet' stuff (which is also what Orion was used for in Footfall) - I completely forgot to think about the post - LEO applications. 

[Akagi]

On 3/26/2022 at 12:28 PM, Vanamonde said:

Could an Orion-style ship land at all? Or would it just keep vaporizing the ground beneath it with braking burns and fall perpetually into the tunnel it's digging?

Yes

[kerbiloid]

58 minutes ago, Akagi said:

Yes

Once.

[farmerben]

It is a massive advantage to be massive with an Orion style drive.  I see it as something you can build out of asteroids and then use for interstellar colony missions.

The  crazy part of the idea are the giant springs.  The more massive we make the entire thing the less need for springs.  

I mean we just need to save up enough deuterium... then we can hollow out Vesta and go for a spin around the galaxy.   

[Akagi]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

Once.

Yes as in 

"Is it a missile or a rocket?"

"Yes"

[Akagi]

17 hours ago, farmerben said:

hollow out Vesta

Chill on the vodka!

[Vanamonde]

A lot of stuff that was not about Orion boosters has been split to its own thread. Some of the stuff that was about Orion boosters has been removed because it was getting excessively contentious and personal. 

Not a lot is left.

[magnemoe]

On 3/26/2022 at 10:32 PM, DDE said:

It's ridiculously over the top. This makes it an effective meme for wowing the outsiders and signalling your belonging to the space/hard SF geek club.

We have Roman graffiti proving this, some done on Egyptian monuments who was ancient back then the soldier put it down. 
One of the most mind boggling things is that Cleopatra was nearer today than the pyramids.